In order to manage important parts of the business of a company, an organisation or the like, the use of so-called business financial systems is increasing. The term “business financial system” as used in this specification refers to a system, preferably a multi-module application software, for managing important parts of the business of a company, an organisation or the like. However, for reasons of simplicity, only companies will be mentioned hereinafter. Thus, it is to be understood that whenever “company” is mentioned, any other kind of organisation is also applicable. The important parts of the business managed by an business financial system may for instance include, but are not limited to, product planning, parts purchasing, managing inventories, interacting with suppliers, providing customer service, tracking orders, etc. Well-known business financial system providers include SAP, Oracle, J D Edwards and Peoplesoft.
However, all business financial systems are not compatible with each other. That is, data output from one type of business financial system may not always easily be input to another type of business financial system.
Thus, there exists a problem in connecting different business financial systems with each other, i.e. electronic data interchange between different business financial systems is difficult.
For example, a manufacturer may co-operate with a large number of suppliers. If not all suppliers utilize the same business financial system as the manufacturer, there is a problem in interchanging data electronically between the business financial system of the manufacturer and the business financial system of each supplier.
EDI, Electronic Data Interchange, has been proposed as a standardization of electronic communication of information between different computer systems. Examples of EDI documents that may be transferred electronically between different computer systems include purchase orders, invoices, price quotes, product inquiries and the like. In an EDI document, the information contained therein is arranged according to a standardized format. Thus, in order to make use of EDI, each document to be transferred electronically between two different computer systems has to be converted into the EDI format. For example, if an invoice is to be transferred from a supplier to a customer, the invoice created in the supplier's business financial system has to be converted into EDI format. For the customer's business financial system to understand the information contained in the EDI invoice, the information contained in the EDI invoice has to be converted into a format understandable by the business financial system of the customer.
Accordingly, the use of EDI for transferring documents electronically between different computer systems involves converting documents into EDI format at the document sender and converting documents from EDI format at the document receiver. Thus, if two different business financial systems are to use EDI for data interchange, integration of additional software at each business financial system has to be performed so that the required document conversion may take place. This kind of software integration in order to be able to convert documents is in most cases very costly. Although EDI makes it possible to interchange data between different computer systems, the costs involved with integrating a business financial system with software for document conversion into and from EDI format are large. Especially for smaller companies, such as for instance a smaller supplier, the costs involved with the use of EDI cannot be motivated.
Still, information has to be transferred in some way between different business financial systems. Thus, documents, such as invoices, purchase orders and the like, which are generated by a business financial system, are often printed on paper for delivery to a receiver having another business financial system. To automatize document handling, different data capturing solutions have been proposed. For example, a paper document may be scanned for obtaining important information items contained in the paper document. The information obtained by such data capture may then be input to the receiver's business financial system. However, data capture involving scanning of paper documents is not 100% reliable. Consequently, the data captured in such a manner has to be checked, which is disadvantageous.
As mentioned hereinabove, there exists a need of data interchange between different business financial systems. Large benefits would be reaped for all parts involved if data could be transferred electronically between different business financial systems, compared to the case of manual handling of paper documents containing the data to be transferred.
This becomes especially apparent within the manufacturing industry and the field of transportation. As an illustrative example may be mentioned the process of handling an invoice. Due to the difficulties in transferring invoices electronically, at present a lot of manual work is done in the invoice handling process including printing, enveloping, sending, opening letters, registration, certification, preliminary booking, attestation, payments and archiving. All manual work carried out in this process implies large costs for each part involved.
Various service bureaus, one example of which being The Swedish Post Office, provide services for data interchange including an intermediate part, which interconnects a first and a second part, which are to interchange information data. Information data are sent from the first part to the intermediate part, which performs necessary conversion so that the information data may be received by the second part. Thus, this kind of service provides a means for connecting different business financial systems with each other so that data may be exchanged electronically. However, since all communication goes via an intermediate part, this solution for electronic data interchange is very vulnerable to operational disorders in the computer system of the intermediate part providing this service.